In Other Words

Political manipulation

The war on terror is being used by Bush to gain politically. That was undoubtedly already obvious to most of you, but it has been taken to new extents in recent days. This article was published more than a month ago about how the white house was pushing for the abduction of a major Al Queda member during the Democratic convention. Then it happened.

Turns out the arrest wasn’t big enough (the figure was relatively unimportant, not the big B, if you will). Instead the interest is now on three year old reports found on the arrested man’s computer that have barely been updated about a potential terrorist attack on specific buildings (which raised the alert level to orange for the first time this year). The computer files included no details on when the attack was going to happen, so the police has started to randomly search cars (yes, now that the terrorist’s plans have been discovered they are going to try to blow the buildings up right now, as that would be the stupid thing to do).

Of course this takes a lot of attention away from the convention, limiting discussion and distracting the fickle public. Not surprisingly John Kerry’s bounce has been only half of what is normal in these types of conventions.

Fear as a political tool, good politics or bad policy?

posted by Symbol @ 3.8.04